Analysis: Why College Athletes Should Be Paid

The schedules that coaches are requiring their athletes to follow are rigorous to say the least: Wake up, morning practice, study as a team, classes, practice again, study time as a team, lift weights and then off to bed at a specific time. Where is there time to sit and watch Netflix? Where is there time to talk to fellow classmates? Are colleges and universities pushing their athletes too hard in order to make money instead of allowing them to balance school and participate as a student

Continuing with this big picture view, college athletic salaries are bad news for the quality of collegiate sportsmanship. President of the NCAA, Myles Brand, once stated, “If you start paying athletes, you essentially ruin the integrity of the college game.” What Mr. Brand means by this is that once the motivation of the player is changed to a fixed monetary value rather than the pride and passion of the sport, college athletics become devalued and the level of sportsmanship among players alike is dismantled. A Division I board of director chairman and Chancellor at the University of Kansas agreed with Brand is stating, “even if born of the best intentions, pay for play is the worst of ideas.” This director compares the situation to a “slippery slope” in which college sports would eventually fall to corruption, with new questions and debates being raised and athletes becoming enveloped with the idea of “gaining more money” instead of “winning more games”

Student athletes are unable to obtain steady income because they are so busy with sporting activities and community service activities and are unable to get a job to support themselves. College athletes cannot pick up a side job that earns over $2,000 per year or accept money from their coach to buy food from any local grocery store. These are issues that make supporters question whether the NCAA is treating college athletes like employees or if they really are student athletes. In a survey organized by the Big 12 Conference, players stated that they feel that juggling athletics and course work during the season is expectedly difficult, but athletes often feel just as overworked in the off-season and the off-season can be more draining than the in-season itself. In a 2010 NCAA survey, more than three-quarters of Division I baseball players reported spending “as much or more time on athletic activities” during the off-season as during the competitive season. About 70 percent of men’s basketball players reported the same, as did 70 percent of football players. It was a similar picture for the remaining men’s sports.(New). Student athletes may not be able to get a job but are still treated like employees.

Athletes are sometimes overworked because coaches and colleges think they need to practice all the time. College athletes go through grueling practices, meaningful games and practice over 40 hours a week (Kahn). These athletes spend too much time practicing to work on actual college class work. Athletes are more of an employee than a student with the amount of practice they have. These players do not have enough time to do it all. “the schedule is akin to a full time job, with 40 to 50 hours a week devoted to football-related activities”(He). Football players, whether it is practice or not, spend way too much time doing football activities to get homework or other school related things done. Sports are a big part of these kid’s life but it should not be their entire life. Athletes will have nothing to fall back on if colleges work them so much with practices and not enough with school. Having all of this practice time may not help them prepare for the real life after college. All that colleges would have to do is have the sports teams focus a little bit less on practice time and maybe a little bit more on actual school. College students need to be prepared for life after college and practicing all the time does not

Imagine being one of the best employees working for a billion dollar industry, but despite that, you aren’t paid. That is the reality for college athletes, who should be paid for their athletic ability. In the United States, four hundred thousand athletes are part of the NCAA. Yet, none of the athletes are paid. College athletes should be paid because they make the events possible, and those events generate billions of dollars in profit.

In 2011, a report entitled “The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport” concluded in the idea that 85% of college athletes that are there on scholarship live below the poverty line. While in school, the players have no time for a job, and since they do not get paid, they cannot afford to live life having everything that they need, which doesn’t include anything they want to do on their free time. College athletes should be paid for playing, starting with the sports that bring in the most money, because the NCAA is a multi-billion-dollar organization and it is also what they deserve since they are sacrificing their body and time for the school.

Often mentioned as a reason to pay athletes is the extreme revenue that the NCAA brings in every year due to the performance of these athletes. The NCAA racks in close to 1 billion from college athletics and the student-athletes gets nothing. Television networks pay millions to the NCAA for the rights to broadcast regular season games. Millions more are paid for the rights to broadcast play-off games. Thus, colleges are making money from the performance of these athletes.

Arian Foster is one student athlete that believes the NCAA only cares about the money these student athletes are bring in. Arian Foster himself knows first hand the cruelty of the NCAA rules. He would come home from a Friday night game with no food in his fridge and wouldn’t be able to eat that night. He didn’t have time for a job with school and football practice. So how else is he suppose to make money to feed and clothe himself. When cases like this were brought to the NCAA attention they simply told the players to take out loans like every other college student because they weren’t special. They could not even be bothered to feed the players that were bringing in billions of dollars. The players would go home hungry while their coaches drove brand new Lexus’s. Walter Byers the founder of the NCAA stated that his own rules and regulations he put into place will someday be thrown out. He said that because he realized it is more than a college education that can pay for what the NCAA is receiving in return. These student athletes are being put in video games way after their time in college. Some of these students’ athletes should not even be accepted into college because they are not ready academically. The NCAA’s rules and regulations are out of date and Walter Byers himself knows that it is only a matter of time before they are thrown

Now who exactly is considered a student athlete. Well a student athlete is someone who is competing in a sport that is being sponsored by the education system (Wikipedia). We all very well know all the big games that go on here i the united states that bring in fans from all over the world. Like Bowl Games for football, march madness for basketball. But those are not the only sports that colleges have their are also several other events and sports that are organized through the NCAA for every season of the year. Here are most that happen in the fall Men's and women's cross-country, Field hockey, Football, Men’s and women's soccer teams, Women’s volleyball, and Men's water polo. The sports played in the winter are Men's and women's basketball teams, Bowling, Fencing, Men’s and women's gymnastics, Men’s and women's ice hockey, Men’s, women's and mixed rifle, Men’s,

And that doesn’t take into account the endless hours of practice and coaching that was required to have prepared them to compete at this level to begin with. They are also responsible for media appearances and other events that can be time consuming. According to an NCAA survey conducted in 2011 Division I football players averaged 43 hours a week. (Kaburakis) This means that on top of classwork and homework athletes are working more hours than many people with full time jobs.

From the outside looking in, collegiate athletes live a life of luxury. They have the opportunity to perform the sport they love in front of massive crowds, and some are provided an opportunity for free schooling. Although this is undoubtedly true, outsiders are not capable of comprehending the true hardships associated with college athletics. Although they are granted acceptance and often a scholarship to their school of choice, they are not truly granted the opportunity to utilize their school’s academic resources to their fullest potential due to the immense amount of time that they are expected and required to devote to their sport. These activities include film review and playbook studies, team meals, traveling to and from games or

It's not high school athletics. In some ways, it's really exciting. But if your child's not passionate, you are going to have a lot of teary phone calls” (Holland, Kelley Holland, and John W. Schoen). The dedication and passion athletes need to play a college sport is pretty high. The amount of time college athletes have put into the sport they participate in is very time consuming.

Emily Zatopek once said, “An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.” This is relevant to the controversy that surrounds college athletes receiving compensation for their efforts in sports. College athletics have gained much attention and popularity over the past few decades. Due to these actions by sports fans across the United States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is bringing in huge amounts of money year after year. It has been reported that the NCAA’s annual revenue has increased every year since 2000 (Alesia, 2014). In about two years the NCAA’s total revenue will approach one billion dollars (Strachan, 2015a). With all of this money coming

With the money that they receive, they will be able to take responsibility for their money. They also put their bodies on the line each game they play. We all have different arguments whether college athletes should be paid. College athletic programs cannot afford to pay athletes.

College students have extremely valuable and limited time. They each need to focus on passing their classes. It’s even more difficult for college athletes. They have to study, practice, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, go to classes, and keep up their social life. Failing to complete even one of theses things could greatly affect their life in a negative way.